I am currently making cutting boards. I’ve made a few before and have never gotten good joints. I cut all my 1” strips on a table saw. They were uneven so I put them through my planer a couple times. When I hold the pieces of wood together I can still see light through. How do I get a good joint before glue up?

28 replies so far

I would get a razor sharp handplane and hit each side of a glue joint- think about it this way, your planer doesn’t cut flat, it takes thousands of scallops and scoops due to the circular cutting nature of the machine, so your mating surfaces are not getting full glue surface connection. Look down your components lengthwise and you will see the very so slight scallops….

Same technique for table top glue-up, or face mating glue-ups- once you get used to it, do spring joints to improve your strength and gluing accuracy.

Sounds like either your planner blades needs some adjusting or the opposite side of the boards are not flat causing it to rock as it goes through. If they are large boards and you have a jointer I would try that. Small you can use shims and hot glue to get them level on a flat surface like a scrap piece of mdf and pass them through the planer.

I recently had this happen to me on my planer and a wood chip had gotten under one of the blades making in convex. Still not sure how I pulled that off but was an easy fix.

It seems likely to me that your pieces arecurving. They may also be coming out ofthe planer thinner in the middle.

Glue joints can be refined by running theparts over a jointer, using a router tableset up for edge jointing, jointing with a handplane, or even rubbing the parts back andforth on a flat surface with sandpaper tapedto it.

Loren I’ll try doing the sandpaper and table thing. I’m not experienced enough to know all the wood working terms. But the cheapest route is the best for me so I’ll give that try. What grit sand paper would work best?

Loren I’ll try doing the sandpaper and table thing. I’m not experienced enough to know all the wood working terms. But the cheapest route is the best for me so I’ll give that try.

- AbbyL

Try to make sure the surface is really flat. Ihave a scrap of MDF with a length of 6” sanding belt glued to it.

I wouldn’t do a whole batch without checkingthe joints. If your sanding surface is out offlat the first few joints will probably tell you. If you have a stone counter top in the housethose tend to be pretty flat.

no one mentioned it, but something may be off on your table saw, too. If the blade is not parallel to the fence, you could be getting cuts that aren’t square. If your blade is dull & you’re having to force the wood through, you could be putting uneven pressure on it/letting it come away from the fence.. That sort of thing..

I don’t have my own table saw yet. I was using a family members one and it is very old and makes sounds it shouldn’t. I’ve learned my mistake with theses boards. One I need more practice with a table saw. Really all power tools and two get my own table saw.